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Hello and welcome to Slate's serial spoiler special.

I'm Slate Senior Editor Gabriel Roth, and joining me from our DC studio is Slate's

words correspondent, Katie Waldman. Hi, Katie. Hi, Gabe. So this week's episode of Serial

turns out to be the finale of season two. And as such, this is the finale of season two of the

serial spoiler special, the podcast on which, as I'm sure you know by now, Katie and I go deeper into the show's themes, explore its characters and situations, and look at the ways in which the podcast reverberates in the world. So it took us seven minutes into this episode of serial to find out that this was going to be the last installment of Sarah Koenig and company's retelling of the Bo Bergdahl story.

In that sense, it was quite a departure from season one where the finale was teased way ahead of time and wildly anticipated and salivatingly received.

So how did you feel, Katie, being blindsided by the fact that the story was about to end instead of having a chance to prepare?

Well, I think blindsided is a great place to start.

It was a surprise.

I do wonder if there was something tactical in the way that they, instead of, as you said in season one,

giving us lots of time to sort of gnash our teeth and

wonder and project into the future, they sort of slipped into this finale by a side door.

And I think that probably has to do with the fact that we didn't really get any hard and clear

answers for this season. So I can see why

they would do it. They wouldn't want to build it up and then sort of have the air leak out of the

...